Burlow & Spencer Ltd Reviews

Name: Burlow & Spencer Ltd
Rating: 3.90

3.9 Rating 181 Reviews

73 %

of reviewers recommend Burlow & Spencer Ltd

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3.9

Based on 181 reviews


Customer Service
Communication Channels	Telephone, Email

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Phone:

0845 643 9753

Email:

support@burlowspencer.com

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Anonymous

Anonymous // 01/01/2019

Filter: Rated 1 None 5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Stars Helpful

“We were quoted a price of £4000 on the 26th of March. Paid on the 27th of March then sent an email on the 28th of March cancelling as their services were no longer needed. Since then, despite repeated phone calls, of which we speak to the receptionist only, we are told to email. After many emails, these go unanswered and today, 4th of May, I am no closer to getting a refund!! Absolute incompetence!!”

Helpful Report

Posted 6 years ago

“In short, the reviews on here must be made by themselves! My experience with them was one of total frustration, utter incompetence and professional negligence. They are not licenced and my advice is DO NOT USE THEM if you value your sanity, money and health. Once they get your money they DO NOT CARE! I employed their “services” last November to assist in getting my Malaysian fiancée a visa as I am caring for my very sick father who has advanced stage Alzheimer's. The Visa was refused, so now my fiancée is stuck in Malaysia with nowhere to live and I am stuck in the UK caring for my Dad on my own. We have had to cancel our wedding and guests from around the world have been told the wedding is on hold. Initially, they were very good at prising the fee out of me. I had booked return flights from UK to Malaysia on 26th January to return on 28th March assuming that would be enough time to get the visa (paying for priority). Phone calls were not returned, when I emailed, I got auto reply saying they would reply within 24 hours, which of course they didn’t! All-in-all thoroughly stressful to deal with. On our flights to Malaysia, I had still not received the completed forms and indeed had to wait another week before getting them. The forms were shabbily completed, with mistakes but I assumed the application was generally correct. I had to fly back without my fiancée as she was still waiting. A week later she called, distressed to say the visa had been refused. When I looked at the letter and did some more research, I could see what the problem was. Although I was receiving carers allowance (they had not crossed the correct box), they made no mention of “adequate maintenance” and the visa was refused on that basis. Obviously, I tried to call/email them to discuss and again no answers until I started to threaten legal action (not sure what to do) and negative feedback on websites. A guy called Adam Khan called me, told me UKBA had made a mistake and I could appeal (takes 1 year+) or re-apply and it would definitely be OK, oh and I would get a discount on the fees and a more senior consultant!. I questioned this and asked about “adequate maintenance” and he had no idea what I was talking about! I did get an sms telling me a new invoice of £900 was coming. I told him, it was their fault and it had to be free. He promised to call me on Monday but didn’t, I sent another 2 threatening emails and he called me Wednesday, saying he had been sick and offering free legal fees. I tild him that wasn’t good enough and that Burlow and Spencer needed to pay government fees as well as it was their error. He said a manager would have to call me but of course that will never happen. I understand they are not licenced by OISC and neither are the licensor DDR Legal? This is a short version of what happened so far but they have been a nightmare to deal with, don’t give a damn about their clients and do not have the relevant knowledge to process these matters.”

Helpful Report

Posted 6 years ago

“Wrong advice given Perfect service up to payment, after service was downhill, miss leading information, advised on a route to take by them, only later to find out this was incorrect, my main advice to you is avoid this company, do your own research on this company, pay no attention to 6 star reviews, they are very misleading with their intentions. Please research this company hard for yourself.”

Helpful Report

Posted 6 years ago

“It is my opinion that Burlow and Spencer are rip off merchants. They take your money prior to telling you whether you have a chance of a visa or not. They are Lawyers not Solicitors, anyone can call themselves Lawyers, you do not need any Legal Qualifications. They just take the info you give them and put it on a form, in my opinion not very well. I would not recommend this company under any circumstances. They are in my opinion not very professional and leave a lot to be desired. I would recommend you look elsewhere for advise. I wonder how many of these reviews they wrote themselves ? 97% I do not believe it, are you sure ?”

Helpful Report

Posted 6 years ago

“Do not use this company. The adviser assigned to us (since left the company) used a route for immigration visa that was clearly never going to be accepted by the Home Office. We accepted the "expert" advice but it is far from expert. Further they disclosed the surname of another client in the documentation sent to us - a narrowly avoided data protection breach, and would not even acknowledge that this was shoddy work. I paid £2500 and have asked for a full refund. The visa application was denied because the wrong form was used. They are not registered with OISC. Technically they don't need to be, but my advice to anyone seeking immigration advice would be to ensure that the immigration adviser company is registered with OISC.”

Helpful Report

Posted 6 years ago

“Burlow Spencer ignore your phone calls, do not call you back. Burlow Spencer are not registered as solicitors so there is no recourse to law society ombudsman when they give you poor service. They do not know about the immigration health surcharge. Nasty shock that was. In the end after months of delays and not calling back, I did the forms myself online. Not sure what they do for their money. A waste of time and money. ps according to ripoff website they post a lot of fake reviews.”

Helpful Report

Posted 6 years ago

“We are just scared to death. We have been trying to obtain our residence through Burlow and Spencer. My partner (de facto partner) is Italian. The assistance we received from Burlow and Spencer was just preposterous. Once the residence was refused (the first time) then they charged us another £2500 approximately. Basically we paid the first £2000 approx. to then learn we have to pay another £2500 approx. Both payments made in one single instalment and on the same respective days. After the first refusal they told us the situation was extremely delicate and they pushed us to pay the next full amount. We had an interview on that day. We had the interview with a solicitor who knew nothing about our case. We had to re-explain everything from the scratch. He helped us filling the forms and we re-sent the papers. This time we sent them without having filled the payment details for the home office to take the money out from our account for the fees -£65 approx..- When the application was refused the second time, they blamed us for not having filled the payment section. They tried to charge us again £2500 by all means telling us that if we didn't do so we were taking the risk of being deported. I was very strong this time and I said I wasn't going to pay anymore for this terrible service and I said we should have been advised better on how to fill the form. The form should have been revised before being sent instead of leaving us all stressed up and trying to fill the documents on our own -something that we have paid them to help us with already £4500!- Fortunately, one of the advisors acknowledged the situation was a bit tricky and they agreed to do the application again for us. This time WE worked very hard on it. We gathered testimonials etc. The testimonials were something WE discovered we should do by reading carefully all documents. This third time and out of desperation, we started learning about the whole process ourselves. Then we realised testimonials are indeed very important, so we added them. When we called B&S asking for their advise on adding testimonials, they said the Home Office wasn't going to care about them. Finally the residence got refused for the third time. We received the usual call from B&S this time prompting us to pay again so they could submit, for the first time, the form directly from their firm. I answered, no, "I'm not paying any more for your services". Then one of the advisors suggested they could do it for free. We agreed to allow them to do it one more time... They advised us a solicitor was going to call us. This happened later. The solicitor that called us, knew nothing about the case! and was asking us if we sent any documents at all. You can imagine how we felt... I said: "Please check our folder and call us again. We are making the effort of paying for your professional advise but in order for you to be able to do so, you need to analyse the case first, otherwise we will have our residence rejected all over again." To which he answered, don't worry, I will take a look and get back to you. He never called again... Finally I started calling last week to recover my documents, they answered: "your case worker will call you later today". They did this two times. Today I called again and I said: "Please give us back our documents and most importantly, our passports, we have been left without any identity documents" To which they answered: "Your case worker has already uploaded your documents and they don't have them any more" I was shocked and very scared. Basically they are expecting us to print our passports! Now we are left with no supporting documents and no passports. This is one of the worst situations I faced in my life, this firm has left us with no way of accrediting our identity. These lawyers have managed our case irresponsibly and now we don't now what else to do...”

Helpful Report

Posted 6 years ago

Burlow & Spencer Ltd is rated 3.9 based on 181 reviews